# Instructions on replication

### 1. Decompress Data.zip

### 2. Results Replication

- Run the replication.rmd file

- code for each table and figure in the main text and supplemental appendix are included and labeled in this .rmd file. 

### 3. 

#### We modified source code for the amce package for this project. The plot_amce.R file contains the modified source code. 

#### Data folder

There are four folders in the Data folder, including the data needed to replicate all the results presented in this paper. 

*Conjoint and Real* We conduced  two nationally representative samples from the American Social Survey (TASS). The samples are collected by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). The NORC1 survey was fielded July 1 -- 24, 2020 ($N=1,006$). This survey included the conjoint experiment and the real ads experiment. However, due to a programming error, the conjoint study from this wave was not usable. The NORC2 survey was fielded to re-administer the NORC1 wave with the correct programming for the conjoint.  This was fielded from March 31 to April 19, 2021 ($N=1,013$).  The Conjoint and Real folder contains data needed to replicate results from the Conjoint and the Real Ads experiment respectively. 

*Pilot and Follow up* We also conducted two smaller surveys of U.S. adults recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT). In advance of implementing our conjoint analysis, we recruited 218 respondents who were U.S. adults in May 2020. We refer to this sample as AMT1. These respondents were asked to evaluate the political messages included in the conjoint experiment on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “not at all political” to “extremely political.” The pilot folder has pilot data needed to replicate figure C1. We conducted a separate validation survey (N = 302) of the messages’ strength in the real ads experiment in July 2022. We refer to this sample as AMT2. Respondents were U.S. adults and were asked to evaluate the message in isolation from the sponsor (although the images were included). Ads were evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale. Respondents were asked to read each statement and then asked, “How political is this statement?” The Follow up folder has data needed to replicate results from figure C2. 

Please reach out to l.zhaozhi@wustl.edu if you have any questions. 

